Tag Archives: panetta

With all due respects to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, women should not serve in combat. Yes, they should have equal pay, equal opportunities, and there should be absolutely no barrier to them rising to the top and beyond in the military. But combat, that’s another matter. While I don’t buy into the standard knock against women in combat, and that is that they are too puny, too prone to get pregnant and too likely to be a hazard to men and a boon to the enemy on the battle field with their supposed fragilities and physical liabilities. The indisputable fact is that war, combat and the killing that goes with it, is well to say the least, simply not healthy for man or beast, let alone women.

The women in combat issue should be seen for what it is. And that’s an over the top, in your face, sop to gender and political correctness. That’s not a bad thing in any other area of life. But again, war and combat is another thing entirely.

The interesting thing about the debate over whether women should be allowed to trade bullets, rockets, and blows with a battlefield foe is that the overwhelming majority of enlisted women in the Army’s own surveys have flatly said that they oppose involuntary combat assignments on the same basis as men. Their rationale makes perfectly good sense. It’s that the training for female soldiers is and will be modified to compensate for physical differences. But they also know that a drop down standard of preparedness for them won’t help women or men survive on a real battlefield.

Panetta was well intentioned in trying to right a perceived gender wrong in scrapping the women barred from combat rule. But in the end, the better rule is to keep women and men out of combat.